I didn't see the documentary, but from your description, I'm glad I passed. I also have personal experience and would agree with your experiences, knowing what it's actually like for a child on ADHD meds not to really understand or appreciate the difference we see from the 'outside'.

I've also been thinking a lot about the term "legitimate concerns". Surely everyone believes their own concerns are legitimate, so it's a meaningless term. Except it's not meaningless because inherently the word literally legitimises ill-informed and manipulated racist rhetoric. It validates Reform.

I don't recall much detail of how that was reported at the time, but that does seem like a reasonable link.

Where are the broadcasters (other than Quiet Riot) trying to actually report facts and debunk misinformation?
I wonder if people just don't want to hear it because it feels like being lectured by a nerd saying, "Well ackshually, I think you'll find it's a little more complicated than that..." 🤓

They had already tied themselves in frightful knots over balance, being the nation's public broadcaster, before Brexit, and then that starkly accentuated it. It seems the natural consequence of attempting to represent everyone instead of openly biased media outlets.

I'm sure you could get AI to write one for you ;)

...hobble Reform's shady online tactics at the same time. And if the money is going towards local organisers, that's ok. Focus energies now into improving people's lives in ways that you can talk about & demonstrate. Rebuild community and stem the flow of angry people into the arms of the far right.

Also, the talk around how Reform might spend that money gives the government a win-win opportunity... there is overwhelming public support for putting pressure on social media to fix their algorithms and do more to restrict misinformation. We know this is Reform's MO, so target social media and...

...the same is true of the coverage and debate around data centres and water consumption. Almost nobody is giving a holistic telling of the many facets of that issue (except perhaps very specialist publications).

None of these nuances appear to be conveyed to the public, nor evaluated as having different functions, roles and value. It's all just presented as AI. As is usually the case, it's not just good/bad, it's so much more complicated than that.

And those differences have different impacts and value. AI 'slop' is wasteful of resources and damaging to creators (in my view), code agents and data analytics have huge societal and economic potential, but also endanger jobs and cause hacking concerns, chatbots are useful but dangerous...

100% agree, but is it also another failure of modern journalism? I wonder how many journalists/reporters even understand, themselves, that not all AI is equal. There are huge differences between chatbots, generative AI for images & videos, agentic AI, predictive AI, etc.

Catalogues - Monday, September 14, 2026
3 guesses

1️⃣ 2️⃣ 😻
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www.newyorker.com/puzzles-and-...

I think this is why my heart sinks and my eyes roll whenever I hear politicians call for a "national debate" on a chosen topic. All that ever comes of that seems to be entrenched, angry views and culture wars. And Brexit.

Does it become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy (especially with constant, fevered focus on opinion polls) as the perceived inevitability of a Reform govt. (for example) aids the FOMO of floating voters with only a tangential awareness of policies between elections?

Possibly too late for a podcast episode title, but I feel like 'The white grifts of Dover' might be something?

Oh, for an edit button... ; should have been l

At the risk of annoying some people on this conversation thread, I do think this extends to podcasters and journalists (some of whom I really love!) - the overriding politica; discussion at any point during an election cycle seems to be "how does this affect future success for ___?"